Lady Killer (38 page)

His rock hard member stood at attention in front of his body, but Clio was more enamoured of the wonderful curves and valleys of his chest and stomach. He simply got more beautiful each time she laid eyes on him, and she found herself almost overwhelmed by his power. And by the fact that, for now, he was hers.

She slid off the table and stood in front of him. “Lie down,” she ordered.

Her eyes were more purple than Miles ever remembered seeing them, and his desire for her a hundred times more intense. Nothing he had ever done made him worthy to possess her, he knew, and knew that meant he had to cherish her that much more. He climbed onto the table and lay down.

Clio lay on her side next to him. She dangled her fingers over his chest and warm wine dripped from the tips like a hot summer rain. Miles was surprised it did not boil as it hit his hot skin. She leaned over his body to lap at the drops, her breasts brushing over his chest, and Miles reached around and hauled her on top of him.

“I want to be inside of you,” he said. “Now. Please.”

But Clio only smiled mischievously and shook her head. “You were in charge before. Now it is my turn. Let me go or you will regret it.”

“How,” Miles queried. “What will you do?”

“Learn at your own peril.”

The idea was tempting, but temptation, as well as everything else, left Miles’s mind as Clio plunged her fingers in the warm wine and then ran them in long smooth strokes up the entire length of his member. She sat up and straddled his chest, facing away from him, so that he could not see her front, or what she was doing to him. He felt her hands, both of them, sliding up his shaft, felt her palms form a small tight cup over his tip before spreading to let him through, felt her body growing wetter on his chest as he responded to her touch, finally felt her bend forward and encase his organ between the soft globes of her breasts.

She slid backwards, going up on her knees so she was not straddling him any longer, but kneeling above him. Miles could see now, could see her nipples, hard, dangling over his stomach, could see her mouth go coasting down over his member. Pleasure made him squeeze his eyes shut for a moment, but fascination opened them again. She moved her lips over his body slowly, and he could see the indentations in her cheeks as she sucked him in. Above him, her body glistened with arousal, and as she joined her hand to her mouth to stroke him more entirely, he craned his neck up and kissed the swollen bud of her body.

Clio moaned against his member and he did it again, loving the vibrations that his pleasuring caused in her mouth. Her lips tightened around him, sucking him in harder, her tongue lapped at his tip as it passed by, and at the same time he sucked her in, sliding a finger inside her as his tongue grazed over her with his teeth. Each time she stroked him with her mouth he returned the caress with his. Clio pulled his entire length into her mouth, cradling him from below with both her hands, making a ring of her thumb and index finger to pull him taut, and moved up and down with quickening pressure, until his groans resonated between her legs. He spread her bottom wide and traced the valley between its two halves with one finger, pressing against the sensitive place just below her opening as the fingers of his other hand tickled her and his lips suckled at her tiny tip, and he felt her mouth tighten around him in a gasp.

They soared together, each moment of pleasure echoing through the other’s body, more intimately aware of one another than they had ever been, until the coils of their desire were wound so tight that they could no longer bear it. Clio felt Miles grow bigger inside her mouth, felt his body pull up toward her, and she sucked at him harder, running her fingers behind her lips, from the very base to the tip, twirling her tongue around him, moaning as he licked her back, until Miles surrendered, shooting himself into her mouth, pressing and gasping and hollering, “I love you, Clio.”

It was the feel of his lips forming those words against her body, of him shouting it into her, around her, while he sucked her, that sent Clio spinning helplessly out of control. Still savoring the sweet taste of him, she pulled her mouth from his spent organ and pressed her body against his lips until he said it again and again, his tongue and teeth converging around her on the word “love,” his lips curving and tightening around her bud on the word “you.” “I love you, I love you,” he repeated, over and over into her, propelling her into such a shattering, roaring, powerful explosion that she was astonished the entirety of Dearbourn Hall did not tumble down around her, kennels and all.

I love you,
she heard echoed through her ears and through her body. She let herself hold onto the words, for just one moment, let herself hug them to her mind, as she slid away from Miles’s mouth and settled herself alongside him on the table, her head pointing toward his feet. She knew he had not meant the words, could not mean them the way she did (it had felt so real), knew they were something you said at the height of passion, but that only dimmed their luster slightly.
I love you,
she heard him say again in her head one final time as she rested her neck on his thigh and he leaned his cheek against her. Then she pushed the words from her mind, closed her eyes—

And said, “Spaniels!”

Using every ounce that was left of his energy, Miles half opened one eye. “Have you solved the case? Do you know where Doctor LaForge is hiding?”

“No. But I know who killed your guard dogs,” Clio replied.

Miles displayed his astonishment by half opening his other eye. “Who?”

“The vampire. It happened the last time as well. If you look over the accounts of his activities, you will see that just before and at the beginning of his killing spree, an inordinate quantity of dogs around London died. There were reports in the news sheets about the large number of dead stray dogs, and the occasional obituary for a pampered pet. Those obituaries always said the dogs died of mysterious causes. Nobody made the connection to the vampire at the time, but now…” her voice trailed off. “Does anything about how your dogs died contradict this?”

Miles blinked. “I do not think so. My dogs began to die two weeks before the vampire appeared, just after Mariana and her party arrived. The first to die did so slowly—we found them lying about listlessly and then several hours later they died. The last two were different. There were no scuff marks in the dirt around them to indicate protracted death throes, so we assumed they died on the spot. That is part of what has been confusing us, the different manners of death. The dog keepers assured us it was not in their food, and the victims did not appear to have been strangled.”

“It could just be a coincidence, but I doubt it. Did you look for wounds on the dogs’ bodies?”

“No. Only marks that they had been tortured. Do you really think the vampire was drinking their blood as well?”

“I don’t know. It does not make sense according to the
Compendium,
since I have never heard of anyone being nursed by a dog. But the parallels are very striking. Is there any chance we could look at the body of one of the dogs?”

“Yes. My dog keeper buried them in the corner of the stable yard. I can have them exhumed tomorrow. I can’t promise he’ll be thrilled about it, though.”

“No, I don’t imagine it will smell very good, either. But if there are puncture wounds at least it would clear up the mystery of how they died.”

“I thought you did not work on cases involving dogs,” Miles told her wryly.

Clio elbowed him. “How hard would it have been for someone staying at the house to get at the dogs?”

“Easy. Anyone could have gone to the kennels without arousing suspicion. As a matter of fact, Mariana and her entourage spent a good deal of time out there when she first arrived.”

“That is strange,” Clio said with a frown. “Mariana hates dogs. The reason I bit her when we were younger was because she was torturing one. I wonder what she was doing out there.”

Now Miles really got energetic. He raised his head and looked at Clio. “I believe it was her tutor’s idea. Unless I misremember, Corin told me that Doctor LaForge was teaching her the names of the species. One of the prerequisites of being a good aristocratic wife.” He reached for Clio’s hand as he said the last words and held it tight. Then he released it slightly. “Do you remember, two days ago, when there was no victim and we had expected there to be one?”

Clio nodded.

“Doctor LaForge was ill that day,” Miles rushed on. “He did not get out of bed at all.”

“Ill like the vampire would be if he had not drunk enough blood,” Clio put in.

“Precisely. And the next day, after Lady Starrat’s body had been found, he was fine. As a matter of fact, I think Bianca described his recovery as ‘miraculous’.”

“That seems to confirm it then.” Clio paused, then shook her head sadly. “I wish I had figured this out earlier. Then we would have known it was someone in your household right away and we would not have wasted any time. Two girls—possibly more—died because I was not smart enough.”

Miles sat up, reached for Clio, and pulled her to his chest. “You did not kill those girls. The vampire did,” he told her, repeating her earlier assurances to him. “But you did make it possible to capture him.”

“Hopefully. I hope that when we search his chamber tomorrow, we find proof of his guilt. And perhaps a hint about where he is hiding. And then it will be over.”

Miles nodded, and they subsided into silence for a moment. Clio was about to fall asleep when she became aware of his eyes on her face.

“What is wrong, Miles?” she asked, propping her chin on his chest.

“Did you mean that? Really? That the days you spent with me were the best of your life? That—” he paused, mustering his courage, all the courage he had. “Did you mean that you love me?”

Clio looked at him wondering how he could not know. Instead of answering, she took his hand and laid it on her chest, where her heart was suddenly pounding furiously.

“I, Clio Thornton, dedicate my heart to you, Miles Loredan,” she said solemnly. “It is, and will always be, yours. Only yours. For as long as it continues to beat.”

4 hours after midnight. Moon—one degree less than quarter full. Waning.

Which was almost exactly fifty-seven hours.

Chapter Twenty-One

In his room at the Painted Lady, Doctor LaForge, the man known as the Vampire of London, waited.

At Dearbourn Hall, the search was underway. Forced to remain invisible, Clio stayed in Miles’s apartments, avidly collecting each piece of information Corin brought her, concentrating hard in order to keep her mind from wandering back to the previous night.

Every crevice of Doctor LaForge’s room was probed, every rug looked under. The floorboards and wall paneling were dismantled. The bed was slashed to ribbons. His armoire was disassembled down to the last hinge. But this proved to be unnecessary, for the clues were lying in plain view.

His clothes were shown to have been padded to conceal his real figure. He had a paste that was known to be used for adhering false mustaches. He had the lost key to Sir Edwin’s desk. All of his books were found to be in English, including some translated from the French, showing that he was not a foreigner at all. With the help of Toast—who had fallen from Mariana’s good graces when he nearly ruined the strand of pearls she was using as his leash during the ball the previous night by trying to eat it—they found a blue kerchief hidden among the tutor’s papers that was identical to the one Clio had found next to the first body.

Perhaps most damning of all was the white linen shirt, crumpled in a ball in the back of his armoire, that was covered with a brown stain that could only be dried blood. It turned out that there was an even more important and obvious piece of evidence, but the searchers did not find that until later.

In his room at the Painted Lady, Doctor LaForge worried.

“I never really liked him, you know,” Mariana confided to the footman who Miles assigned to question her. “He was always collecting me.”

“Correcting you,” Lady Alecia told her. “And you know it was only for your own good. I thought he was rather a nice man when we met him in Paris.” She did not add that he had nicely advanced her a rather large sum to cover a gaming debt she had accrued. That came out only later.

“Well, I don’t think I needed a tutor,” Mariana pouted. “And I am certain I learned more from Saunders than I did from Doctor LaForge.”

“Please do not say that, Lady Mariana,” Saunders said stiffly, color rising in his face. “You wrong the Doctor, Lady Mariana, and overestimate me. I would not want anyone to get the idea that I overstep my role.”

“It’s all right, Saunders,” Mariana assured him with a coy look. “There is no need for you to be so modest. Doctor LaForge did not know the first thing about clothes or jewels. Everything important I know, I learned from you and you cannot deny it, you baby goose.”

In his chair next to the chess table, alone now that his partner was gone, Sir Edwin shook his head. “What’s a vampire want with whistling, I ask you?” he murmured to himself. “Don’t make any sense at all.”

In his room at the Painted Lady, Doctor LaForge fidgeted.